Despite mounting regional and international calls for peace, Tshisekedi’s regime continues to pursue a failed strategy of military confrontation in eastern DRC. He completely refuses to embrace any genuine political solution.
This illusion—that force can resolve a deeply rooted political, social, and economic crisis is rapidly accelerating the collapse of his already fragile regime.
The March 23 Movement (M23), after seizing the capitals of North Kivu and South Kivu provinces—Goma (over 1 million inhabitants) and Bukavu (1.2 million inhabitants) respectively, now effectively controls these entire eastern provinces, covering an area of 124,274 km², the people of eastern DRC have largely welcomed M23 as liberators and heroes, hopeful that this Congolese movement will finally bring democracy, the rule of law, and an end to the corruption and abuses perpetrated by Tshisekedi’s criminally regime. For years, the region’s population has endured terror at the hands of Tshisekedi’s forces and allied gangs engaged in robbery, murder, and exploitation.
Remarkably, M23’s leadership has shown a willingness to pursue a peaceful resolution, proposing a comprehensive peace plan that respects the territorial integrity of the DRC while granting the eastern provinces, united as a single autonomous Kivu province, broad political and administrative autonomy. This offer aims to protect local communities and end the cycle of underdevelopment, corruption, sexual violence, and the systematic plundering of the region’s rich natural resources. It is a clear, politically grounded roadmap to peace, justice, and socio-economic progress.
Yet Tshisekedi’s regime continues to reject this path of dialogue. Instead, it escalates militarisation, pouring resources into a doomed military front against a popular Congolese movement that holds both territorial control and moral legitimacy. This pursuit of war over peace will be Tshisekedi’s undoing, his regime’s death sentence. The people of eastern Congo, having suffered decades of unimaginable horror, deserve a state governed by law and committed to human dignity.
If Tshisekedi refuses to engage constructively in Doha or elsewhere, he risks not only the disintegration of his presidency but also the further destabilisation of a country yearning for lasting peace and reform.
ellenkampire